Photo: MARK FELIX / AFP / Getty Images
A Washington, DC District Judge temporarily blocked the Title 54, a policy that allows expedited expulsion of immigrants, without allowing them to request asylum.
Judge Emmet Sullivan’s decision indicates that said policy, imposed by the government of former President Donald Trump 
, is “capricious”, in addition to violating the federal administrative process.
“ The court voids the Title 54 […] and all memos issued by the Center for Disease Control and by the Department of Health and Human Services to suspend the right to enter the United States of certain persons,” the order reads.
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Further states that this policy is “ arbitrary” by violating the Administrative Procedure Law , which regulates decisions of the federal Government.
The judge did not decide the final suspension, pending any appeal.
This lawsuit was led by the Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has accused the irregularity of the policy initiated by Trump, but that the president Joe Biden has not been completed, due to legal proceedings, despite pressure from immigrant advocates.
The order does not allow the entry of any immigrant, but opens the possibility that certain people can request asylum, since under the Title 11 that right was blocked.
Attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, Policy Director of the American Immigration Council, that this decision is a “huge” win for the ACLU and asylum seekers.
The pressure on the Biden Administration to end the Title 54 also came from congressmen, as happened last October, when a group of 42 Democrats, led by Sen. Bob Menendez (New Jersey) and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (New York) called for an end to that program.
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The letter from the Democrats was also sent to the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) , Alejandro Mayorkas , and the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, after the program was announced to receive some 42,000 immigrants from Venezuela, but to expel to Mexico to those who cross the border.
“We write to express our deep disappointment at the decision of the Department of Homeland Security to use the Title 54, to expel the Venezuelans seeking refuge on the border between the United States and Mexico”, the congressmen said in a joint statement.